Safekeeping
by ninety6tears
Summary: Some time after Lunatic has been apprehended, a NEXT scientist makes a troubling discovery about the extent of Yuri Petrov's powers. Kotetsu handles it all considerably well. Barnaby really doesn't.
1. Chapter 1

Barnaby didn't hold on to many things. It was when he was organizing some belongings in his apartment that he came across the ripped sash for the first time in a long while.

He'd almost forgotten he still had it and wasn't sure why he'd kept it all this time. He crossed the room, changing the channel on the screen with his other hand as he approached the waste basket, but then his arm recoiled from the motion like the object was stuck to his hand. In the next second his attention was drawn to some news story on television and he walked back towards his window, barely looking down at his hands as he smoothed the burnt length of cloth into a neat fold and placed it back at the bottom of his drawer filled only sparsely with desk supplies and some other memorabilia related to his parents.

It seemed like a strange coincidence that it was only two days after this little episode that Barnaby got the call from Kotetsu about Dr. Verma. But before that, there was Petrov.

.

.

.

.

The year was NC 1980, Barnaby had just turned 27, and Kotetsu was down to twelve seconds. Kotetsu still wore his bracelet to be on call, but it was understood that it would probably take an event of the apocalypse for Kotetsu to be called in for HeroTV, where it was widely known that he only had a few gems left in the bank. Antonio had once remarked they would probably be used up on pedestrians that didn't look both ways.

Barnaby saw the other heroes far more often than he saw Kotetsu as of late. If he'd been taken in by anybody as something of an unofficial new partner, it was Keith. Barnaby had never had much trouble tolerating him and they worked well as a small team, but it was to his relief that the producers did little to encourage a more on-the-record partnership.

What displeased him about it was his hunch that the network was still in some way banking on his camaraderie with Wild Tiger even in Kotetsu's absence; it seemed that the same viewership who had only responded to Wild Tiger as half of a partnership were the ones who coddled their images of Barnaby with overdramatic sympathy about the tragic loss of his most important professional relationship. He was increasingly getting asked insultingly nebulous questions in interviews about whether he missed Wild Tiger now that he wasn't often needed, or even more vaguely, how he_ felt _about that. Barnaby would give his shyer smile, innerly roiling and feeling like it was less of a question than a command to get a dog to do a trick and let the crowd coo at the results. He usually gave a calm but dismissive "A lot of things aren't the same."

Recalling one of those interviews from just the day before, Barnaby reminded himself that he was doing this for Kotetsu when he was finally past the complicated security process and sitting at the visiting booth.

Yuri Petrov sat on the other side of the glass, and did not pick up his receiver until Barnaby had clicked his up and pressed it slowly to his ear.

After a moment Petrov said, "I have nothing to say to _you_, Brooks."

"Why have you been sending visitation requests to Wild Tiger?" Barnaby demanded. "If you have something to say to him, you're able to send letters. He isn't going to come."

Petrov looked back at him blankly for a moment.

"He barely makes it into the city anymore," Barnaby added, stammering a bit. "And he's hardly going to make an extra effort for your wishes."

"It's about a delicate and personal matter." Petrov dusted the statement out slowly, clearly enjoying the sharp curiosity Barnaby wasn't quite hiding. "Who are you to say for certain that he isn't willing to come? Is he not the grateful type? I did save his life once."

"There's a difference between being grateful and thinking he somehow owes you."

"And what propelled you to pay me a visit, if you think you owe me nothing for the same thing?" he said slyly, before taking on a more quiet look. "But you see, I want him to know that in a way I'm the one who owes him."

After a couple seconds of Barnaby blinking in agitation, he said, "What are you talking about?"

"If in fact he refuses to speak with me," Petrov said while checking the length of a fingernail on his free hand, "I want you to give him a message that I am sorry. Will you do that?"

Barnaby gave a snooty look of consideration before barely bothering to give it a shrug. "Probably not."

"And why not?"

Because he had no idea what Petrov was talking about. Because he didn't like the sound of it and probably wouldn't want to think about it later. Because he wasn't planning on telling Kotetsu about this visit unless he had to. Barnaby sat there with an arrogant pout and said none of this.

"...I have never liked you, Barnaby Brooks Jr." Petrov spoke with just a slightly more grinding power, and there was a shiver in the air that was very Lunatic, the rhythm of that voice reminding Barnaby of their more threatening points of history. "Your recklessness and pride gave away your true colors to me very soon after we first met. You claim to be a hero, but you're nothing but a childish vandal with a pretty wardrobe and a pretty car. Your former partner at least had some code to go by, even if it was very different from mine."

"As interesting as it is to learn that you have a favorite, I doubt that you asked my partner here in order to ask for his autograph."

"I already told you the reason why."

"To tell him you're sorry," Barnaby said with a cynical look. But then his bravado snagged a bit. "...Sorry for what exactly?"

"I would have liked the opportunity to explain, but when the time comes, he will know what I'm talking about." Petrov's eyes moved slowly up and then landed on Barnaby's, too fixed and making his skin tingle. "And so will you. And maybe you will understand for once that you don't deserve what you have."

Barnaby left the prison as soon as possible after that; when the security officer returned him his phone, it was ringing, and the vague tightness in his emotions made him irritably answer without checking the name. "What now?"

"It's me. What's wrong with you?" the familiar voice demanded mildly.

"Kotetsu." He sighed. "It's not a good time."

"...Oh," Kotetsu said easily enough, but he could hear the frown.

"No, I was saying you caught me at a bad time." That still meant the wrong thing and he let out a frustrated breath while fumbling his car keys from his pocket. "How are you?"

"I'm good, but I was wondering about that call from Ben. He told me he called you too?"

Barnaby checked his phone with a pout. He'd gotten a call while he was with Petrov. "I missed it."

"Oh. Says he wants us to go meet this...Dr. Verma." He loftily drawled the name. "Some kind of NEXT scientist."

"Chander Verma? The geneticist? I take it you've never heard of him."

"Uh." A crack of something awkwardly half-spoken. "No."

Barnaby felt his lips curling at the edges probably for the first time that day. "Does this mean you'll be coming to pay him a visit?"

"Yeah, tomorrow."

That took him aback a bit. "That soon?"

"Well, uh. Ben says it's not urgent, but he seemed a little anxious, so I thought I'd better."

"What could have been urgent? It's not like he's that kind of doctor."

"I can't imagine what it's about. But hey, I'll see you tomorrow? You're not too busy to do this?"

"I can clear my schedule without any difficulty."

Barnaby did not bother saying how inconvenient the short notice was; in all honesty, he was glad for the surprise of Kotetsu visiting without him having to really blame anybody for the mess of wiping off a day of his schedule.

The next day came with a wet and slightly gloomy morning and Barnaby arriving to a pristine lab building still grouchy from the rain and his early morning interview, which had cemented his growing suspicions that he no longer enjoyed interviews.

When he got to the right floor, his eyesight smacked into Kotetsu's profile hanging right around the corner from the stairwell: He was cringing in some idle scrutiny of a safety sign on the opposite wall, his mouth mumbling noiselessly around one or two words.

Barnaby was distantly aware that this was time to call his attention with a hello, perhaps by offering him one of the two coffees he was holding, but for the quiet wind of a small moment all he could do was look. Then they effectively barged into their greeting when Kotetsu made a sudden decisive movement that involved turning right into Barnaby and jostling one of the coffees into slipping from his hand; Kotetsu balked a startled apology and his attempts to clap onto the cup merely resulted in ruining the drink's designs for a more quiet descent to the floor.

After Kotetsu was stuffing a final paper towel down the nearest trash can, Barnaby courteously handed him whichever coffee was left and insisted he take it. The pursed expression Kotetsu made with the first sip told Barnaby that had been his drink, remembering that Kotetsu could never handle the richer coffees; Barnaby sighed at knowing he would have soldiered through the entire cup for the sake of showing gratitude if he didn't put him out of his misery. He took the drink out of his hands, decided he no longer wanted to bother with the damn coffee, and gruffly dumped the whole cup into the garbage.

He might as well have admitted that he was still reeling from his visit with Petrov; it had sunk something irritating into his thoughts that he couldn't define. It was with Kotetsu's loose frown at him throwing away the cup that Barnaby knew he suspected something was awry, but this was the first chance to say, "It's good to see you," and Kotetsu did so with a genuine grin.

Barnaby nodded his agreement and his arm automatically went for Kotetsu's, then just squeezed him at the elbow for a second before he withdrew. Bizarrely enough, they had a physical rapport of frequently hugging each other well established, but only under the condition that they were in their power suits. Barnaby doubted either of them could explain this, and most of the time it was merely funny, but that day was different. He was starting to believe he and Kotetsu had crossed all the thresholds they could cross, and with the distance now between them, could go no further.

Dr. Verma turned out to be a genial man who didn't give off many airs of eccentric genius. Barnaby quickly understood that unbiased work with NEXT research had made him a friendly contact with several people in the hero business, and he and Ben had been acquainted for over a decade. The atmosphere in the clean but casual meeting room made Barnaby loosen up a little, and for the moment he found it hard to understand the slight knot of dread he'd felt all day.

But then the conversation turned away from conversational; Ben said, "Here's the deal, Kotetsu. I talked to Dr. Verma a long time ago when your powers were first beginning to decline, just to see if any concrete discoveries had been made about that kind of thing ever since the time period when it was happening to Legend..."

Ben looked for a second like he regretted bringing up Legend despite it obviously being relevant. Certain facts about the man's home life had become common knowledge soon after Lunatic had to own up to his real name in the public eye. While some were willing to dismiss the hero's negative traits as the lies of a criminal who knew his way around tugging a jury, Barnaby could only suspect whether Kotetsu believed it or not because he had never once seemed willing to talk about it. His Mr. Legend collections were no longer sitting out on the increasingly rare occasion that Barnaby visited.

At the moment Kotetsu only shared the obligatory isn't-it-a-shame look that went all around the table at the reminder, before Ben went on.

"Anyway, there wasn't much he could tell me then, but he was very interested to get his hands on the information that the decline was possible. Even then I wondered, though, because he told me that out of all the NEXTs he'd met and interviewed and studied, he'd never heard of this happening to any of them before..."

"So?" Kotetsu said with a shrug. "Obviously it's not common, I guess, but since we can think of a couple people..."

"Kotetsu, I know you're too humble to say it, but I'm sure you've been wondering why you seem to be a very rare case...Rock Bison has reported no diminishing of his power in any way and his age is not far from yours. All of the information that Dr. Verma has gathered about other NEXT has failed to give us more than rumors about others who may have lost their power as they aged, and he's been doing specific research on this for a year now."

This all looked to be a conversation Kotetsu really wasn't eager to have, though it only slightly showed in his little pout and shrug. "I actually always assumed..."

"Your daughter." This was the first time Dr. Verma had spoken, and Kotetsu looked endearingly chagrined by the interruption, like a kid who'd accidentally given away the secret of a practiced magic trick. "That was my presumption as well, for a time, that NEXT who have offspring lose their abilities when their child's power emerges. But we've found many records of NEXT who have children with abilities, and none of them have experienced what happened to you. There isn't even a reliable correlation that suggests powers are passed from parents to their children."

Barnaby felt helpless to do anything about how that fact could be making Kotetsu feel vaguely disappointed, but a stunned reaction only appeared on the man's face for a moment until it melted over into a dazed frown. "So...it's just something wrong with me, then?" If there was any regret in his feelings he was hiding them well, which somehow only seemed sadder to Barnaby.

Dr. Verma blinked and assured, "I would not put it that way, Mr. Kaburagi. Anyway, I hate to speak so coyly on this subject, but I want you to understand what made us arrive at the theory that I believe is the best explanation. For if it isn't a natural process, and if it isn't related to the commonality of you and the Petrov family having offspring, it was logical to assume the cause of it was something else that you and Mr. Legend hold in common."

Kotetsu shook his head in frustration. "What could that be?"

For a couple seconds Barnaby was just as lost, but then abruptly he let out a sigh.

Kotetsu looked at him. "What?"

In an almost defeated mutter, not yet entirely sure of the facts but with the vague certainty that rides an ill omen, he said, "Lunatic."

"You're quicker than I was, Mr. Brooks," Dr. Verma commented. "For some time I've been looking into the possibility that one NEXT could have the power to damage someone else's abilities with some kind of specific contact with them, and I was finally able to request some genetic and blood samples from Yuri Petrov. In my studies I long ago discovered a microscopic body—I call them 'electrobodies'—that indicates whether a person possesses special abilities, but comes in many varied forms. When I studied a sample of these particles that had been taken from Yuri Petrov's blood, I found that something emanating from his cells, when placed with samples from other NEXT, would virtually attack the foreign electrobodies."

Kotetsu was leaning forward in awe; next to him Barnaby was very still.

"Nothing about the interaction was fool-proof; it worked more like an infection, where presumably some minor exposure would be less likely to affect somebody in a permanent way, but in the event of a very direct attack on someone not equipped with a power suit for example, it could over time slowly kill all of the electrobodies in a person's system. It's fascinating to me because it works much like infiltrating a foreign body with this new immune system which, for whatever reason, recognizes a person's powers as a dangerous foreign agent. It may seem odd to suggest his actual flame throwing can have the same affect, but some NEXT powers do behave like a sort of radiation poisoning in ways that scientists more capable than me don't even understand; your hundred power may have saved you from being burned, but it seems to me that his abilities can conduct more than fire."

Barnaby felt the eyes on him as he stood up in a slow reel, turning to face the door and setting an elbow against the high-backed chair he'd been sitting in. After a hesitation he heard Kotetsu quietly mumble, "I have to say Petrov seemed capable of a lot of things, but to attack his own father..."

"'Attack' may not be the right word," Ben said. "He was pretty young, and accidents can happen, especially when powers are just emerging. You know that as well as anyone."

It was possible that Barnaby was hardly the only person in the room who recently doubted that the cause of Legend's death had been a typical house fire, but no one was going to bring that up, and either way it would be impossible to tell whether any damage done to Yuri Petrov's father had been intentional or not. And Barnaby had other things on his mind, things that were making his fists clench into throbbing knots.

He heard Kotetsu say, "Bunny?" He turned and looked at the chair for a few seconds before sitting back down, avoiding Kotetsu's eyes as he felt his confusion prickling at him from the side.

"Maybe Lunatic figured out at some point he was able to do this, maybe not, but it's kind of spooky how there's something intellectually fitting about it," Ben was saying. "He thought he was a bringer of justice. When he thought people didn't deserve to live, he was able to kill them. But when he thought a NEXT didn't deserve the status, he simply took away what made them able to be heroes."

"Mr. Brooks," Dr. Verma interjected after a moment. "You may understand now why it was treated with some urgency that you should come in with Mr. Kaburagi. You both had more direct confrontation with Lunatic out of any of your team and given this new information, it's important that you try to remember any incident when you or any of the other heroes were directly harmed by him."

"It was just Kotetsu," Barnaby replied at a quiet rapid fire. "It only ever happened to him."

Kotetsu laughed nervously. "Doc, I have to admit my memory isn't what it used to be, so you'll have to take his word for it. I don't even remember when we ever would have battled him without our suits, so it's hard to remember about anybody else."

Barnaby's height went up in a snap of anger as he swung back out of the chair in frustration. His shin smarted against the tea table and an ashtray was still stuttering against the glass top as Barnaby was halfway out of the room; when he heard Kotetsu standing after and taking the breath to make some exclamation, he spun on him. "Don't. Kotetsu, you stupid old man. Don't stand there and tell me you don't remember how it happened, because I can believe it, but _don't_."

"What's wrong with you, Bunny? Remember _what_?"

Barnaby turned on his heel from the mouths hanging open in various expressions and was out the door in a couple stomps. At the stalled elevator down the hall, he seethed in a breath and slammed his hand on the wall, walking off to find the stairs before Kotetsu could try to follow him.

Once home, it wasn't any better. When he finally lay down in bed just to make himself stay still, he was still so angry with himself he could have sobbed.

.

.

.

.

It had taken him some time to understand why Mr. Legend had always been so important to Kotetsu. Everyone knew Wild Tiger was a fan; Barnaby had known it back when he still had to be on camera to be pressed to have a simple conversation with Kotetsu, and of course then he'd dismissed it as a slightly pathetic form of nostalgia.

There had been a moment much later, one of their first lengthy conversations they got into while they were being shipped from one press junket to the next after defeating Jake Martinez, when they had somehow transitioned from friendly small talk to what was basically a do-over of the type of questions they'd only asked each other on camera before. Barnaby had asked him for the second time why he admired Legend so much, expecting the same answer he'd gotten before but actually wanting to listen this time. What he got was a story that took him a bit off guard, about Kotetsu as a scared little kid being reassured that he was meant for something big with the simple message that he could some day be a protector rather than a threat.

This had enlightened him somewhat, but Barnaby had admittedly still felt that the man's admiration of Mr. Legend smacked of some preoccupation with something, that it was still disproportionate to the value of one encounter. But then one day he found his theory for it on accident, and had a feeling like he wanted to kick himself for ever failing to empathize: Kotetsu answered a question about his father by claiming there was nothing to tell, and the idea fell sadly into place. He had not loved Legend with the fanatical but fickle love everyone else placed in favored heroes; he had held onto a few words that had been said to him by a kind man during a bad time and constructed an entire bible out of it, because it had made him believe there was some kind of want of him the world had that maybe Kotetsu's father never did.

Or so Barnaby assumed, because he had to construct all of that for himself out of one of the very few things it was inadvisable to ask Kotetsu about.

The night they managed out of some miracle to corner and apprehend Lunatic (with the help of some inventions of Saito's which were basically ultra-powered water guns), Agnes had wanted the camera team to catch up before the actual arrest and convinced them to wait it out for a few minutes before reporting their location to the police. This ended up leaving the team some lovely alone time in which the shock of a familiar face under Lunatic's cracked mask was still thawing through an exhausted silence.

Petrov sat there with his hands and arms bound into a small flame-proof device and awaited his fate with dignity. Barnaby could admit he'd respected him in that moment; one could almost believe a man who accepted someone else's definition of justice with quiet grace was far from being a hypocrite. And then, just after Kotetsu was coming out of a brief frowning reverie to give Barnaby a hint of a smile and a proud gentle bump of a fist on his thigh, Petrov started talking, and without any introduction said, "Mr. Legend was my father."

Kotetsu balked, at first seeming more startled by him speaking than by the words. "What?"

Petrov elaborated in a slow drip. "He was a drunk, at least for any part of my youth that I can remember. He was haughty and quick to anger and he beat my mother. When things were worse than that he would also beat me."

It was the most darkly bizarre moment of Barnaby's career. The stunned stilling of the air seemed to last forever; and then Kotetsu's laugh, which was horrible and not like a laugh at all, preceded him saying, "Sure. Great joke there."

"It's not a joke," Petrov corrected him patiently. "I'm not telling you this to be mean-spirited; there is something else I need to tell you."

On the far end, Saito had been sitting with the group of Antonio and Karina and Nathan, who all had stopped to listen, possibly since Petrov had opened his mouth. They were all pretty much gaping at Kotetsu instead of at Petrov, as if afraid of how he would react, but then Kotetsu picked up his hat to incongruously wear it with his undersuit, as if the cologne-commercial motion of angling it just over his head while grinning ruefully at Petrov shielded him somehow. "Whatever you have to say me, I'm not going to believe it anyway."

And Kotetsu had gotten up and walked to the other end of the truck, and once the police arrived Barnaby had left him alone instead of urging him to come out and enjoy the cheering, and generally it was believed that Wild Tiger had nothing to do with the arrest of Lunatic because he went and collapsed into one of the sleep chambers and didn't come out for hours.

Most of the people in the van hadn't believed what Petrov had to say, and Barnaby had looked at the rest and been certain he was the only person who contemplated that Kotetsu actually had. Once Petrov's trial was underway and his identity public, it began to look like it could be the truth. But Barnaby had forgotten about that other thing Petrov wanted to say to Kotetsu, and Kotetsu had made it clear he had no desire to know.

Lunatic's several murderous rampages, while worse, didn't seem to amount to the enraging sin that was revealing to Kotetsu that his beloved role model had been a dangerous man. But the worst of it was the thing that Barnaby couldn't be angry about, what he'd seen that had convinced him that Petrov somehow knew how sacred that was to Kotetsu, because there had been a look between them. He had broken that icy politeness in his features to give that short but brandishing glance that said: _Don't you dare call me a liar. He was my hero too._

Legend had meant something crucially cyclical. He had filled the notion that there were real heroes before Kotetsu and there would be them after. Barnaby wanted Kotetsu to realize what that meant about what an anomaly he was, that he had only made himself out of himself and that that form of virtue he'd always sought after had already been there without the pat on the head from some man in a cape. But he knew he would fail to have the words to tell him this, and he wondered what Kotetsu could possibly believe in now.


	2. Chapter 2

Kotetsu found Bunny sitting at one of the topmost rows of seating at the ice rink when it was some fraction of an hour before Kaede's yearly recital. It had been over two weeks since Bunny had stormed out of the lab, and they hadn't spoken since.

He lingered for a brief moment, shoving his hands in his pockets at the end of the row where Barnaby was sitting. Bunny was slouched with his elbows in his lap and intently watching the figures dancing on the ice, but Kotetsu had a feeling he knew he was there. Kotetsu went to him at a lazy pace, stopping at the next seat over to say, "I wanted to buy you an ice cream, but they don't have the kind you like."

Bunny didn't reply, and didn't move as Kotetsu sat down next to him. For a moment they remained in comfortable but unhappy silence. It had taken Kotetsu a very long time to be able to gauge when it was best not to say anything to Bunny, but he had to say something.

"Were you going to ignore my calls forever?"

Barnaby sighed, then seemed to lean back a little. He made a small jerking movement of his head toward the rink. "She's gotten very good."

"Ah, she's just warming up," Kotetsu said proudly. "She'll freak out if she figures out you're here. Probably best not to let her know until she's done."

"You don't actually think she still idolizes me more than you?" Bunny had a tiny smirk. "Not now that she knows the truth?"

"Course she does. She just thinks it's like totally awesome that I'm friends with BBJ." He paused, enjoying the small cringe from Bunny, who hated that that abbreviation for his name had popped up in popular usage. "But hey, at least she thinks I'm cool."

"Maybe she thinks you're cool because of some of the stories Barnaby Brooks has told her about her father by now," Bunny said, something almost sly in his expression.

"Yeah, _right_. You told her how I screwed up HeroTV's game show deal, now she'll never completely respect me again."

"I figured I should keep the good stories for when she's more trouble," he teased. "When she's...a teenager or something."

Kotetsu chuckled at the "or something."

"No, I did tell her about you having to crawl out of a hospital bed to come help me with Martinez."

"She would have known about that."

"But not my version of the story. And anyway, the press wasn't very thorough about you that day."

"When did you talk to her about this?"

"When you fell asleep in the waiting room that one time...She asked me if you'd ever saved my life, actually." The frown that had been threatening its way into the conversation took slowly over on Barnaby's face, deepening the tension all over him. "The funny thing is, I told her that's a story she should hear from you. It turns out you wouldn't even remember."

They fell into another moment without speaking, Kotetsu shaking his head once in agitation. Bunny had turned his glance back forward when Kotetsu quietly muttered, "No...No, I remember that."

Bunny's expression fractionally lightened in confusion.

"It was the second time we ever encountered Lunatic. After we were talking to those kids at the academy. No time to get the power suits and you were going crazy. You came on all reckless and pissed him off, so I took the hit. Hurt like hell. That's most of what I can recall." Kotetsu abruptly sat up a bit, squinting. "Did you see that kid fall on his ass?"

Bunny interrupted by saying Kotetsu's name, angrily. "Why did you act like you couldn't remember?" he demanded.

Kotetsu gave a tired sound. "Because I didn't want you feeling bad...It was a long time ago, Bunny. I'm actually surprised you remember."

Barnaby had that still and unreadable expression again, but it was fixed flat on him. "You saved me without even thinking about it. You could have died. That's not something I would easily forget."

"Maybe not usually." Kotetsu gave an uncertain wobbling gesture. "But back then you and I were still..."

"No," Bunny protested simply. "Not after that."

With a kind of sheepish grin, Kotetsu shrugged. "You could have fooled me."

"Well, you're not very hard to fool."

"And you're sweet as ever, Li'l Bunny."

Barnaby shook his head again, like the levity was all wrong to him. "How can you just let this go?"

"...This might be hard for you to believe, but I'm past all that. I went through a tough time over it, a really tough time, but I've accepted what happened. What made it happen doesn't matter so much now."

"Even now that you know it's my fault?" Barnaby's fists clenched at his side. "It was because of me, because I was reckless, and you didn't _have _to do that, I couldn't understand why you—"

"Of course I _had _to, you were—"

"That's the _point_," Barnaby snapped. "I didn't _get _all that stuff. You did. You were a hero and I was some kid with a revenge wish. You shouldn't have had to pay for it like that. You were the oldest and you weren't the best but you would have wanted it more than anybody else. It should have been me."

This was new. It was so worryingly strange, because Kotetsu had never known Bunny to get hung up on what he necessarily deserved. It had always been, in some ways, a logical but elegant quality. "How the hell do you imagine things would have gone if what happened to me had happened to you?"

Bunny let out a frustrated loud sigh.

"What would you have done if that had happened? You don't have a kid to look after; you hardly had anything. And you're smarter than me about some things so you would have picked up on it happening sooner..."

There was a weak scoff from Bunny, perhaps out of realizing how much he'd been thinking about this.

"And personally I don't like to imagine that we may not have even been friends at that point. We may not have _ever_been friends, because you might have just walked out on being a hero without any explanation, like I was going to do."

"You might have come after me when I left. Bombed me with lunch invitations..."

"You might not have let me. We didn't completely trust each other; things were different. And you wouldn't have had the chance to become half the hero you are now, and you are a great one, whether anyone wants what I have to say about it or not. I'm _happy _what I had is yours now; think of it as a gift, not like it's something you stole, cause it would have sucked, alright?" Kotetsu said. "It gives me a damn heart attack that it almost happened to you. I'd make the same call all over again if I knew what it would mean, especially since it would have meant one of us or both of us being a lot more lonely."

"What difference does it make anyway?" Bunny returned after a sink of a second, looking off to the side, and Kotetsu couldn't see his face but he heard his voice breaking up into an unsettling moroseness that seemed like it should have been apparent before. "It still separated us; you're still out of the job and I'm still—_alone_—"

That last word was almost like the embarrassed half-sob of a child as Bunny was standing up in an upset rush. Spurred by pure astonishment, Kotetsu grabbed his right sleeve before he could get one step away. When Bunny struggled, his grip became more fierce, and finally they both stilled.

He felt the dutiful frozen feeling he had when there was something he needed to say to Kaede and only had one chance to make it clear, and his brain did none of its usual stumbling, recognizing the solid necessity of the moment. After a second of mentally gathering himself, he said, "Look."

There was a second of hesitation in which Bunny pulled his arm back into himself, but didn't make any other move.

"If there's only one thing you've ever done for me," Kotetsu slowly said, "it's that you made me feel less lonely than I had in all the time since my wife died. So if you're saying that you feel alone you better sit down and tell me all about it, cause from where I'm standing I'm always a phone call away and you barely ever bother with that, and if you're not the one who's doing just fine after all I'd really like to know what the hell's going on."

Bunny's body sank back into sitting with an unexpected abruptness, his arms reaching and then it happened, the pitching lean and the clumsy grab at Kotetsu's scarf and everything hushed to a silence that made Kotetsu suddenly aware of the distant slicing noise of the skate blades hitting the freeze and Bunny's mouth against his had the same lethal perfection of those lines cleaving through the ice, the moment so slow and fast as he was kissing him back before he could even think about it.

He clutched in, turning his body and blindly knotting his left arm down under Bunny's elbow to clutch the bleacher as a shaky hand took him by the back of the neck. Kotetsu went still for only a second as if to savor the moment when Barnaby softened to a stop, waiting for his lead, and when Kotetsu did catch up to remembering how to do this like he meant it, that pulled a completely unfamiliar noise from Barnaby. In that second he felt a kind of innocent discovery he had forgotten about. It was a rare little swell he'd felt only a few times in his life—when he first felt Kaede's fingers close around his thumb, when he had a couple glasses of wine and then proposed to Tomoe and she actually said yes, when he was a young boy learning that he could race the shuttles from one station to the next.

But it was a little different this time, simply for the fact that he'd not really believed he would ever feel it again. He wondered what else he could do to Bunny. The thought affected his whole body like a new and wondrous, tightening sinew.

Bunny pulled back, finally, and Kotetsu could swear he was blushing as he buried his glance somewhere into his shoulder.

"I hate to say it," Kotetsu said after a moment, "but that wasn't much of an explanation."

"I don't know what that was for." There was barely a sort of groan in Bunny's tone. In the next second Kotetsu saw something in his eyes that made him get the idea that maybe it actually had explained some things, more things than Bunny had been ready to voice out loud. A strange, aggressive tenderness swamped him completely, and he couldn't think of whether to say that he thought Bunny was lying or of how to say it.

Hell, but the more speechless Kotetsu got that day, the more he seemed to talk: "Are you going to do that again?"

That was when a small buzzing came at the air: Bunny's bracelet was going off. He tilted his wrist up with a half-formed curse.

"Looks like Kaede won't be so happy with you after all," Kotetsu said lightly. More insistently he added, "Take a day off tomorrow. Come visit."

Bunny hesitated, and his eyes had a vague pleading to them.

"For dinner. Just dinner or lunch, and we'll talk about whatever you want."

A tired smile under Bunny's eyes and he said, "Okay."

When he'd taken a few quick steps up the stairway aisle, Kotetsu turned and said, "Hey, Bunny."

The man stopped and just barely turned to meet his look.

"I miss you like hell sometimes."

He'd said it as if he needed to prove to both of them he could mean it on neutral ground, as a friend, as his best friend. And he did, but even though something seemed to touch Bunny's eyes, he only gave a possibly-imagined nod and turned to hurry up the rest of the steps without a word in response. And Kotetsu was left remembering the immense uncertainty and fear that often courted along next to those wonderful points of no return.

.

.

.

.

The next afternoon arrived without much accolade; Kotetsu's mother was finishing up a few dumplings and mumbling cheerily about something that made him laugh and then squeeze her shoulder to get her attention.

"Listen, Barnaby's coming over pretty early today, and I wondered if you could find an excuse to give us some alone time until Kaede's home from school."

She paused in the motion of folding a hand towel, cocked her eyebrow.

"It's just that we might have something a little...heavy...to talk over?"

"Oh. Well, as long as there's nothing dire you're not telling me about. I'm sure there's plenty to be done in the garden."

"Don't work too hard, Ma."

She only responded by kissing him on the cheek.

Bunny arrived with his usual tidy punctuality. When the time quickly rolled around and he saw the taxi rolling up outside the window, he found a strange knotting feeling in his stomach made him almost wish that Bunny had been delayed for once.

Kotetsu invited him in with a dash of their usual casual talk, "By the way, I was watching the way you caught that armed robber. Nice one." This didn't quite wash over into comfort once he and Bunny were stiffly sitting side by side in the living room, Kotetsu failing to initiate any further conversation and Bunny all-too-politely waiting for him to take the handle with a slightly perplexed look on his face. After a minute Bunny seemed to finally exert the effort of reading Kotetsu's mind. He quietly said his name once.

"Hmm?" Kotetsu mumbled when he was snapped out of awkward reverie.

"I took a long walk this morning and thought everything over, and it seems I was overreacting about the whole thing...at least a little." His eyes gave Kotetsu a sidelong appraisal, as if he expected Kotetsu to be inappropriately smiling. "The one thing that's really been bothering me since yesterday is that I don't think I've thanked you for enough."

That wasn't quite anything Kotetsu had expected; he turned his head, blinking at Bunny.

"You said I should think of it as more of a gift than something that was stolen. And even though we both know that isn't the reality of it, I can live with that outlook. It's almost...fitting, to imagine that what I have now used to be yours, that you gave it to me." He let out a deep sigh. "I wouldn't have asked you for it, but thank you. And not just for saving me. For everything."

A warmth billowed around the uneasiness in his chest, somehow only clutching harder onto the shake of his nerves. He scratched at his hair and lamely stammered, "Well..."

"Where is your mother?" Bunny suddenly asked.

"She's working in the garden. She already made dumplings, though, you want one? I want one."

In the kitchen, Bunny gave a barely disapproving look as Kotetsu popped one in his mouth. "Those felt really hot, Kotetsu."

Kotetsu's hand was already scrabbling in the air to fan at the shocked 'O' of his mouth. He mumbled something that was a confirming exclamation and got a snigger in return. Bunny laughed so rarely; it was almost worth the burning in his mouth.

"I won't think less of you if you have to spit it out," Bunny said to him (Nathan would have died of entendre) and was still wearing a smirk as he handed him a paper towel.

"'danks." Kotetsu grabbed the towel and Bunny primly averted his eyes.

They somehow got into talking about what their favorite dishes were when they were kids, transitioning to cracking about Keith's vaguely childish taste in food as they had done a couple times before at events that heralded a good amount of carnival snacks.

"You're not much better," Bunny reminded Kotetsu, watching him pinch at another dumpling now that they'd cooled. "I've never seen a grown man with so much enthusiasm for root beer floats, first of all."

"You're not really a good judge for such things, you know."

"It's only rational to think that an adult man dedicated to a rather athletic profession would have grown out of those things at some point."

Kotetsu thought for a second and suddenly recalled, "Antonio dated this girl once who would order ice cream floats made with Tab. _Tab_. If that's not a perversion of childhood I don't know what is."

Bunny was curiously examining some souvenir magnets, then muttered, "Wild Tiger: Protector of justice and peace and unhealthy food traditions."

Kotetsu scoffed, "Ah, shut up," grinning as he moved Bunny aside to get into the fridge.

It was only a couple seconds later when he caught Bunny's eyes looking with dull irritation back at him that he realized: He'd just wiped the dumpling grease from his fingers onto Bunny's shirt as unthinkingly as he would have done it on his own sleeve.

The look between them was one of acceptance that this was a new low for Kotetsu T. Kaburagi. Bunny didn't own a single modestly priced article of clothing and for a second Kotetsu felt a knot of embarrassment and dread; but he had apparently forgotten that their relationship had progressed to the point where Bunny didn't really have to get worked up over a damn shirt. The apparent final reaction was to fall into an understanding if long-suffering sigh over the mindless action, and ask, "You have a washer, right?"

"...Yeah. Sorry, yeah."

The laundry room was the most modern and utilitarian part of the house, and kind of ugly, but at the moment Kotetsu was very grateful they had it. He opened up the compartment for the wash and gave a wave towards it, going into the guest room around the corner to root through some extra clothes Muramasa still had in there. He was thinking it could be a difficult search for a shirt he could see Bunny bearing to wear for the rest of the evening and was about to yell the offer anyway, when he turned to see that Bunny had already followed him a couple steps into the room.

Barnaby's fine muscles were slightly more toned than the last time Kotetsu had seen him with his shirt off in some locker room or another, but it wasn't any change in his appearance that gave Kotetsu pause. He wondered at the contours around Bunny's hips and shoulders and neck in a way he hadn't before. He didn't know it would be this different even when things went back to normal, but Bunny had kissed him and that fact hadn't after all just gone away and now there was a false momentum to his own body being confronted with that body, and damn.

Bunny was crossing his arms in front of his chest in awareness of being noticed. Kotetsu felt something stammering rise up in him but when his eyes looked up to Barnaby's face he was getting an only half-uncomfortable, partly amused cock of an eyebrow. Kotetsu marveled desperately at the fact that he had somehow gotten himself responsible for trying to figure out what Barnaby Brooks Jr. did or did not look like when he was flirting.

The thought made Kotetsu's thoughts ricochet back into second guesses. He turned to grip through a few button-ups, the hangers making shrill squeaks as he moved a couple to the side, trying internally to stomp out the sudden burning crackle in his heart.

"Hey," Barnaby was saying, and Kotetsu was startled by the fingering touch of him undoing the sleeve button on his shirt. "You need to balance the load, you know."

"Huh?" He turned into Bunny.

"Well, you're not just going to throw one shirt into the wash? And since I already know you don't clean this one nearly often enough..."

"Oh." He didn't have the chance to recollect himself before Bunny's cavalier hands started undoing his front buttons to take off his shirt. He did only the first couple buttons as if trying to hurry him up, but when Kotetsu couldn't move for the sheer weight of those glancing touches, his eyes latched up into Kotetsu's glance with a paling shy look as if only now realizing what was going on.

"Bunny," Kotetsu said after a moment, very quietly, afraid of breaking whatever spell had suddenly erased all that arm's-length awkwardness of the past endless months.

"I..." Bunny stammered in pure confusion. "Do you want to kiss me again?"

A slight sigh of relief went through him. "To be honest I would have preferred other ways of getting you out of your shirt."

"You better give me a good reason to get out of it, then," Bunny said, something still fragile under the teasing.

"Oh yeah?" Kotetsu raised an eyebrow, and after a few seconds simply answered, "Yeah, I do, I want to kiss you."

Bunny's hands had gone down to rest at Kotetsu's hips; they were back to chaste introductions and it was an invitation to slow care, but that touch alone was doing something that he felt in his bones. Kotetsu had forgotten almost completely what it felt like to simply be in someone's arms. His hand raked up into Bunny's hair, softly and then abruptly pulling his mouth into his.

Almost as if he had no reason to expect it, Barnaby immediately gasped. Something was different, more electric this time. It wasn't like at the ice rink: there was no sound but the pulling breath between them, a higher sense of deliberation. The kiss opened up, Kotetsu's heart fluttering at the tongue pushing surely past his lips and then a small jolt in the air before he felt hands fisting in his shirt and legs tangling against his until he was pressed hard into the wall behind him and Bunny was nuzzled firmly along him and all he could do was gasp more heavily at how impossibly soft that mouth was, heavy desire reining fast through his body. Holy hell, he'd forgotten how amazing it could be to kiss somebody.

When they finally pulled apart to check in, Bunny looked a little awestruck. Kotetsu felt a few locks of his hair and pushed them behind his ears.

"Okay?"

Barnaby responded with a quick meeting of eyes almost as if he'd been pulled out of a reverie, lips quirking up kind of ruefully. "I'm sorry," he said.

Kotetsu pulled his head a little back to look him more directly in the eyes. "What for?"

Bunny swallowed. "You must have thought I was just going to ignore it."

"Egh." He squinted. "Yeah? I kinda did."

"I can't." The small tight gust of air that went out of his mouth was mostly perceptible for the strands of blond that jumped up from his face. "I was trying to ignore it. Not just after that kiss, I ignored it for so long I feel like I can't remember why now, but...I started it and now I can't stop thinking about it and I _want _you...Can we do this?"

It was weird how different it was to be told somebody wanted you, even when the evidence was right up against you. Kotetsu didn't know how he could possibly tell him no or why he would want to. He knew it wasn't a time to get all misty-eyed and _But why me?_After mentally beating that down he let Bunny out of the suspense by rocking his hips forward a little and saying, "Have I actually never mentioned to you that I think you're really hot?"

Bunny's eyes gleamed, before he rolled them. "I don't think I could have taken you seriously if you did."

"As if you ever take me all that seriously."

"You should try harder to make me," he blandly teased with his hands going back to work on Kotetsu's buttons.

That second or so, for some elusive reason, was like the pound of a hammer on a nail going right into Kotetsu's chest. He knew without a doubt he was going to fall crazy in love with this kid if he hadn't done it already. When his thoughts resurfaced he had the clarity to realize he'd started kissing again with quick fierce wonder, yanking Bunny into him. He halfway stopped to mumble into his neck, "You wanna lie down?"

Bunny loosened away for long enough to push the door shut behind them and then let Kotetsu hug him towards the mattress, and Kotetsu found himself pushed, gently but fervently, onto the bed under him.

"This is a nice room," Bunny said very politely, as if it was reflexive to comment on the house even while his mouth was busy pressing along Kotetsu's chest and he probably barely got a look at the guest room anyway. Grinning while Bunny finally finished peeling a stubborn sleeve off of him, Kotetsu waited and then pulled him down snug against him, kissing him hard for another moment before he stopped to remark, "Always so polite, little Bunny."

Rising to the slight taunt, Bunny quirked his mouth and rose up enough to start pulling out Kotetsu's belt in such a sudden snap of motion that the bossy baring of it raised a nervous tide of pleasure. Kotetsu put some effort into helping his own legs out of his pants and then backed up to get less perpendicular to the bed; Bunny took the opportunity while he was moving to get onto his back and shift a little slowly out of his jeans, leaving the red boxer briefs. There was a moment when the bravado was totally gone, his lips pressed together a little nervously; he let out a long breath before turning back into Kotetsu and they resumed inhaling each other.

"Uh." Kotetsu inevitably asked when his mouth skimmed up close to his ear, "Have you ever done this before?"

Bunny responded by eagerly cupping Kotetsu through his briefs, making him grunt clumsily all over the tousled hair, run and squeeze his hand up a pale arm and gasp, but then Barnaby said a little indignantly, "I'm twenty-seven," which wasn't an answer.

"I mean, uh." Kotetsu really sucked at thinking right then, and getting out questions like _Have you ever had sex with a man?_needed an amount of tact. He said, "Have you ever had sex with a man?"

"Mm," Barnaby hummed in his infuriatingly little thoughtful way. "Have you?"

"I've, yeah, I mean—" The hand rubbed on Kotetsu harder and slower at once, and it reminded him of Bunny's weirdly contained version of road rage, hands going right to the proper clock positions on the steering wheel but with those tightening knuckles, and of how Bunny hadn't answered his question and Kotetsu just really needed to know why those hands seemed to be shaking just a tiny bit even while the rest of him was nonchalantly ho-humming his way through Kotetsu-as-usual. "I've done stuff, but I've never like, fucked a guy..."

"You've done things with men?" Barnaby was surprised and there was also a slight irritated flush on his face, like he didn't know if his balancing act could deal with getting pied in the face with something like jealousy right now.

Kotetsu almost laughed, hugged his chin into his neck and said, "I haven't messed around with guys since you were into action figures."

"I was never into action figures."

"You told _Hero Weekly _you used to have one of Tsunami Shark."

"Slander."

Kotetsu laughed then, but it was softer than he ever laughs, nervous. "Really," he asked, hands petting over Bunny's head and neck. "Are you, you know...a vir—_Mm_..."

Barnaby had effectively managed to change the subject to how about he put his hand down Kotetsu's briefs and start jacking him slowly, a little bit hesitantly, and now the look on his face had just the right amount of curious awe fixed down at where it was skin-to-skin now that Kotetsu almost had to assume he'd never touched a man like this. And it was so good. Kotetsu knew he was making an altogether unplanned amount of moaning, and he could hardly hear over the buzzing in his blood when Bunny with these now intense eyes seemed to make up his mind about something in only a second. "You want us to do something I've never done before?"

"...What? I didn't mean—"

Kotetsu got distracted. With some suspended resolution, Bunny had gotten up on his knees and was shifting and slipping out of his own briefs now with not a sliver of self-consciousness. Kotetsu knew there were kinds of attention he did love but putting his body on display was something he treated as occupational duty; here, alone with him, it looked like he reveled in it, as much as it was with the teasing aloofness that he enjoyed anything. Kotetsu watched, his heart soaring south. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.

But Bunny just shook his head. When his hands reached down Kotetsu's hipbones and then pinched his waistband, his attention was still so blurred with all the hearts in his eyes that the eager motion of pulling his boxers down made him vaguely surprised the world hadn't wound into slow motion after all. He felt his body flexing up with nerves at the full exposure of his body, but Bunny sighed and bowed to kiss and breathe in at the lines of his abdomen. And then the joined dips at the top of his thighs. And then down. Kotetsu's thoughts only had time for a brief pop of _He's never? — _before Bunny's mouth wrapped over him.

There was a respite—he could hear exactly one tick of the big clock in the hallway—and then his head supplied him with the most perfect insanity and he could only be hackled by the mindless attention to what he felt. He knew he'd felt this good before, he could remember the idea of feeling this good, but the actual sensation was like nothing he could remember. Kotetsu watched the flexing bumps of the white shoulders with the increasingly surer slides of hot and soft and he felt reinitiated, assured by what had been found by turning this one right key into his body. The blond loops of hair hugged his fingers when his abs hitched him up to touch them while he was groaning and tensing closer to the final tug on his control. Bunny's eyes looked up at him, a rumbled groan of conveyance humming around his cock and making Kotetsu unable to help from bucking half an inch forward as his whole body shouted back to meet it.

Kotetsu said his name once, loudly and factually, before he came.

Bunny finished wringing him out with his hand, already quickly coming up to press Kotetsu's mouth to his and pushing one of his hands down to his cock. He was extremely hard, his eyes begging and him moaning with a new abandon when Kotetsu took him in a firm grip.

He was achingly close and didn't seem to want anything other than a hand and a kiss, but when Kotetsu reached behind and eased one finger of his free hand only slightly inside him, he hissed.

"Like that?"

"_Mmmgod_." He propped his knee higher to rest on Kotetu's hip until the two stroking touches in rough unison made him gasp back into the pillows and flinch through it in a good way like he did when he worked his body through training and Kotetsu_ loved _that, how had he not ever noticed before now that he'd noticed that?

Then the room seemed to be quietly rocking in the tandem of Bunny's panting, quiet at least until Kotetsu did something better than right that made his abs wave up and made him gasp something mouthed around a word that ended up after a few tries to be Kotetsu's name. Kotetsu thought it almost didn't feel real, Bunny losing so much control like this, especially when the almost incomprehensible declaration came thinly out, a hopeless and almost accusatory "I miss you." Kotetsu knew what it meant, not just the simple longing for their old shared life but _this_, he missed this so much even though they'd never done this before.

He cracked out, "Bunny," in the way his words would fuss just to grip around a curse before he fell into freefall off of a building, fingers going a little deeper and tighter without him really meaning to, and then the man below him was sharply pulling him down by fist-shaped hands against his back, holding him as he flew apart in a hard shake.


	3. Chapter 3

They were clothed (Kotetsu in a denim shirt and Barnaby finding himself strangely comfortable in a grey sweatshirt he was able to lend him) just in time for Kotetsu's mother to come back in, having met Kaede on her way up to the house and still chatting with her about her day at school. The girl was confused but excited to see Barnaby, and he was sad to realize Kotetsu hadn't been sure enough he'd come to see him after all to mention it to his daughter.

Dinner went by slick as the wine, Kotetsu a little boisterous in his laughter as Anju told Barnaby a few stories. She ended up on one about the first time she'd met Tomoe, and seemed to perceive a nervous check of Kotetsu's eyes towards Barnaby's as some kind of hint, but Barnaby was interested in the story and listened with happy attention. He worried about his mannerisms at a couple points, worrying he fell short of the somewhat more enthusiastic personality he projected in his interviews, but Kotetsu's family didn't seem to take silence as ungracious.

Barnaby's return train was leaving so early in the morning it seemed to make more sense to stay up until he had to leave. A half hour after the rest of the house was hushed, they tugged each other's clothes off in the bathroom and got in the shower. Whether any uncharacteristic bedroom behavior had shown because of the nervousness of their first time was hard to say, but Barnaby quickly discovered a predictably giving nature in Kotetsu, who fisted himself while he was on his knees and groaning louder the more Barnaby reacted to the sight and feel of his mouth coursing a deeper wet to the streams of water tickling down their bodies.

They kissed each other slow and senseless afterwards until Kotetsu mumbled that he was sorry about the water getting cold so fast. Barnaby smiled into his mouth.

"Your eyelashes," Kotetsu commented. "They look like dandelion seeds when they're all wet."

Barnaby was trembling. It wasn't the water.

.

.

.

.

"What are we going to do now?" Barnaby asked.

Kotetsu had just come back from actually getting the wash started this time and gotten back under the covers with him. He considered what Barnaby had asked, sighing. "I don't know," he admitted, drawing his thumb along Barnaby's face. "You know if I could take my family to live in the city, I would."

"How would I know that?"

Kotetsu looked right at him, pouting and peeved. He stammered, "Well, I don't know. It's just..."

Barnaby fingered through his hair. "That's sweet. But I know you don't want Kaede living in Sternbild. It's too dangerous, kids get nabbed all the time..."

"That's true, but..." He shrugged. "I've just had this shocking revelation that Kaede isn't going to be a kid forever."

Barnaby smiled, but it didn't hold for long. "But until then...?"

Frowning, Kotetsu opened his mouth to say something, aborted the idea once, and then opened again to say, "What it I came to visit more. What if we shared an apartment, and I came every week or so..."

"Kotetsu, I'm serious about this," Barnaby said, his voice coming out quiet and distracted with something a little sad. "It's not going to be easy...but whatever we have, I can't do it over the phone."

Kotetsu couldn't help the scoff. "_Well_..."

"I'm not just talking about sex," Barnaby interrupted. "If it were that simple, I might have figured out a little bit sooner why I was getting so miserable."

Kotetsu grumbled, "You barely ever call me, though."

He shook his head. "I wanted to talk to you every single day. And we did talk a lot at first, but I kept thinking, _Every day_? He has better things to do. But I really wanted you to end up calling when I didn't, and when you didn't I'd be too unhappy to pick up the next time you tried, and then it went on and on like that until it was only a few times a month."

Through this rambling but apparently understandable explanation, Kotetsu's mouth fell to an understanding frown. "That's ridiculous, Bunny."

After a passing moment of thought, Barnaby said, "I think I'd be willing to quit being a hero if we couldn't work out any other way."

Kotetsu's expression told him pretty quickly how he felt about that option, though the fool tried to nobly cover it up.

"I probably won't, though," he promised, looking down at his hands worrying the quilt. "I'm lucky to be capable of doing the things I can do, and somebody really important to me is depending on me to do something good with that..."

"It shouldn't be about what I want for you. I'm not..." The name hung in the air, unsaid. Barnaby gave him a crooked smile.

"You're not manipulating me just because I happen to care about what you think of my choices."

"N-no, but..."

"You don't want me to do what I do for myself, though, right?" Something in Barnaby's voice was bitter behind the caution. "It has to be something I do out of responsibility, not for my personal gain, so it doesn't matter if I get to the point that I don't even enjoy it? I wonder if Lunatic would agree with you."

"Slow down." Kotetsu turned Barnaby's face over by gently holding his chin. "What are you talking about?"

His eyes fell away from Kotetsu's. "I went to visit Petrov, just before we found out about what he can do. I was curious about why he wanted you to talk to him."

"And he's what got you so upset?"

"You know why I was upset. But I guess he had something to do with it."

"But..." Kotetsu took a moment to find some connection in his mind, and then his opposition was innocently simple. "But you never wanted to be like me."

Barnaby shook his head with a tiny rueful smile.

"So why get so worked up by this crap?"

"Because," he said in short frustration, his voice then weakening to a slight stammer. "Because I wanted to be closer to you. Because I want to be...I don't know, _worthy_of you, of everything you've given me. Because if you'd actually handed it over to me on purpose, maybe I'd know that, but I don't, no matter how much you might say it's what you would have done. So...I can't quit. Not now, not yet."

Sobered, Kotetsu only leaned up and pressed his mouth to Barnaby's cheekbone, then idly down along his jaw, recognizing maybe that time would reassure him better than any words and that all he could do was nuzzle the thoughts away for now. It did lighten the mood enough for Barnaby to give a half-smile in recollection.

"You were really just about to suggest phone sex a minute ago?"

Kotetsu smirked. "Not really. Well, now that you—"

"Don't, please."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing's wrong with it." Barnaby wasn't going to elaborate on how unfitting it was to imagine either of them actually attempting it.

"...I have got another idea. It helps you a little more than it helps me, though."

"What?"

"It's...agh." Kotetsu smiled and buried part of his face in the pillow.

"What did they say in health class? If you can't talk about it, you shouldn't be doing it?"

He laughed out a small guffaw. "Do I need to remind you how old I am, Bunny?"

"My point stands."

"If they'd told us the same thing about friendship you'd be a lost cause."

Barnaby's eyes slid to the side before returning forward thoughtfully. "I guess I deserve that."

"Come here," Kotetsu mumbled, trying for a kiss.

"No, tell me your idea."

"Fine. Okay." With a considerable meandering amount of blushing difficulty, he did.

.

.

.

.

The sun was barely coming up when Kotetsu drove him to the train station. He'd folded Barnaby's shirt from out of the dryer and given it back to him, but Barnaby was still wearing his sweatshirt and he didn't ask for it back.

Before Barnaby boarded, Kotetsu was looking unusually pensive. They stood in silence listening to the announcements until Barnaby couldn't help asking, "What are you thinking about?"

Kotetsu flinched his look at him. "Oh, um. I was thinking more about what you said earlier."

"I said a lot of things earlier."

Instead of rising to the snark, he hesitated a few seconds and then said, "I've been watching a few of your interviews lately...Well, I watch almost all of them these days. And even I can tell something's off, Bunny, I mean...there's your fake smile and then there's _that_."

Barnaby sighed. "It's not that bad, alright. I still like being a hero, it's just that some of the novelty is wearing off."

Kotetsu shook off his words with a vague motion of his hands. "I know, but...I keep thinking about Legend lately."

The air stilled around them; Barnaby's eyes that had strayed idly to their shoes remained glancing there and a grim intense curiosity made him pray that the train wouldn't choose this moment to suddenly arrive.

"And you know, he lost the same thing I lost, but he didn't know how to count his blessings. He wasn't less of a hero because his powers went away; it was more because he didn't know when to quit. And I know..." His voice weakened a bit. "I know that you're a better man than he was and that's why I couldn't take it if the job started to kill you. So just—even if it happens next month or ten years from now or doesn't even happen at all, just promise me that you'll quit when it starts to make you tired...And you know what kind of tired I'm talking about."

Barnaby had finally looked up while he was saying this and Kotetsu's eyes were staggering away from the station windows to meet his. A speechless moment passed, and finally Barnaby just nodded.

On the platform Barnaby gave his carry-on the last hoist over his shoulder, frowning uncertainly. Kotetsu checked a glance around them and Barnaby's heart was twisting before he leaned in and kissed him a firm goodbye; later he waved to him from outside the car looking embarrassed and very sleepy and also brightly happy.

.

.

.

.

Hours later Barnaby was back in his apartment. He gave its surfaces no friendly notice, only got out of his jeans and went straight to his bed and fell asleep.

He awoke later still quite tired and not knowing why he'd woken, surprised he'd made it into the evening without a call going off on his bracelet. He felt as if he'd been roused by nothing more than the stirring of thorough silence in his home. In the evening light everything around him was a clean grey. The place seemed to have no smell. He let out a sigh and tucked himself halfway to a fetal position. He lay there and wanted.

Thoughts drifted across him, easing into memories. Kotetsu in his power suit when the outfits were brand new, fumbling to push the right button to unlock the seams at the end of the day, Barnaby rolling his eyes at the old man even as he made a note to look up his bio when he got home. In the restaurant with the cameras lurking owlishly at the edges of their pantomimed friendship, Barnaby noticed that the faint crow's feet along Kotetsu's temples went away when he was bored and not smiling, leaving skin that looked younger but eyes that looked more aged. Some time after Jake Martinez he realized he didn't see that look anymore. On some unceremonious publicity day, when they were waiting for one of the techs to run back with a new chair after the leg on Kotetsu's had broken, Barnaby had the unusual and accidental clarity to wonder just when and how both of them had stopped being unhappy.

Gradually the memories stopped being vision and started being sense. The smell of Kotetsu's shampoo that let him know he was in the next shower stall, the pull of muscles when he slapped a cheerful arm around his shoulders and led him away from a boring group of PR agents and off to the bar. Kotetsu's mouth, loose and confused and then softly throwing warm assurance over the slightly ashamed thing that was simple longing after all, kissing back. Callused nurturing hands that pushed all over his skin, kneading electricity to the surface and sounds from his mouth.

Barnaby had his hand down the front of his pants, his gasps echoing the heaviness of the memories as he was fisting himself in slow but sure strokes. Kotetsu had wanted things to progress a little slowly, but Barnaby already prickled with the recollection of his body and wondered what else they would do, wondered what it would be like to have Kotetsu inside him. He was so many miles away and Barnaby longed with a shock of lust for what that would be, Kotetsu's teeth and breath helpless on his shoulder with pleasure as he gave him the soft slow agony. Barnaby had had men that way, but never one he'd loved; Kotetsu had loved, but not a man before. If he could know it in his bones, that Kotetsu loved and wanted him, if he could find it in himself to say the same. The irrevocable and hypothetical surrender of it was something slowly growing in him, something that had been for a long time. His ecstasy drawing higher, Barnaby swallowed, readying to do what Kotetsu had suggested, what he'd asked.

In his solitary lack of sexual creativity, he had never tried it before, which had surprised but sort of pleased Kotetsu. _Remember what we said_, he'd urged, _about it being a gift?_

His idle hand clutched a fistfull of blanket, a spark of strange nervousness running through him. He gave the reliable mental punch, like an intentional gasp of adrenaline, and the glass vase on his bedside caught some of the blue off of the glow of his hundred power.

His other hand hadn't stopped for more than a second over his cock, but it did now, with a flinch of shock, as he rose up slightly off the bed and his mouth fell open emitting a loud yelp of pleasure. And then another impressive moan and another as his hand began moving again in earnest.

He had never considered it before, how the power would affect his sensitivity in this way, but Kotetsu had promised him it would be something. Apparently Wild Tiger had been asked about it by the more fearlessly suggestive journalists a couple times, way back in the day; Barnaby was unsurprised if slightly miffed that this untapped potential had occurred seemingly to everyone except him.

He had not been ashamed in any way of masturbation, but hardly inventive about it. Sure, it had been not quite enough to satisfy some of his appetites, but he'd depended on the occasional one-hour stand for the more heady powerful feeling of not just touching but being touched. Now, with his hand rubbing himself into such a cracked litany of whimpers that he was blushing at himself in slight dismay, the lonely escape of it was less lonely, a firey wind that blocked out the drafty emptiness of his apartment and of the whole city. He thought of Kotetsu, brawny and clumsy and noble and unaware of his beauty, who only loved life and the lives of others and wanted Barnaby to live and wanted him to thrive and thrum and feel this good. He may have murmured his name when he came like a crash, his whole body drawn up in a coil of nearly sobbing before the last rush of pulse.

He lay on his back catching his breath, and the shined surfaces of the room were still catching flicks of blue light when he dropped back into sleep.

.

.

.

.

He was shopping for groceries the next day when he called Kotetsu.

"So," Kotetsu said after they'd done some griping about the weather. "Last night...?"

"I tried it," Barnaby said, his voice not quite casual, a bit low. He backed up after passing the dessert freezer, his eyes batting to the assortment of soda he'd already put in his cart.

"...And?"

He opened the freezer door and grabbed a pint of vanilla ice cream. "It was alright," he finally said, doing playfully aloof.

Kotetsu's answering laugh, warmer than anyone usually had any right to be to Barnaby's ears, was what did it.

"...Dammit," Kotetsu was saying, "look, I have to go..."

"Okay," Barnaby said. "I love you."


End file.
